I like this statement from my friend Don Bradley, and repost it here with his permission:   I want to share part of my faith here with those who aren’t familiar with it, and to testify of it to them, to my co-religionists, and to my children. The prophet-founder of my faith declared one of its foundational principles to be gathering up truth, wherever it may be found: “It is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism... Read more

    Just back from Abravanel Hall, where, with friends and some relatives, we enjoyed “A Broadway Christmas” with Brian Stokes Mitchell and the Utah Symphony (under the direction of Randall Craig Fleischer).     Before walking over to Abravanel Hall, we gathered with some of our friends and neighbors for what has become a Christmas tradition: a buffet dinner in The Roof Restaurant, atop the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, with its magnificent view of the Salt Lake Temple and the... Read more

We are pushed onto this earthly stage in the middle of the play that has been going on for thousands of years; we want to play an intelligent part and, in whispers, ask some of the older actors what this is all about—what are we supposed to be doing? And we soon learn that they know as little about it as we do.Who can tell us the plot of the play? The sophic mind assures us that the play is... Read more

    A few more of my rather raw notes toward an eventual manuscript*:   “At the fundamental level,” observes physicist David Gross, “nature, for whatever reason, prefers beauty.”[1]   Science writer K. C. Cole says that “the same properties that make a snowflake appealing underlie the laws that control the universe.  Truth and beauty are two sides of a coin.”[2]  “The selfsame symmetries . . . appeal to the senses in  art and music and natural forms like snowflakes... Read more

    Just back from the 2017 Christmas concert of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Orchestra at Temple Square, and the Bells on Temple Square.  The special guests this year were Sutton Foster and Hugh Bonneville.  We had a very good time, and it was made even better by find ourselves, purely coincidentally, seated by very good friends.   ***   Walking around and through Temple Square and listening to the Christmas music, I’m grateful that my reaction to the... Read more

    Some notes from a manuscript:   It would seem, for example, that evolutionary psychology’s insistence that ideas are the products of evolution, “chosen” for their utility in the battle to survive and replicate, is self-refuting.  For included among those ideas, obviously, is evolutionary psychology itself.  If ideas are nothing more than tactical tools for survival, it is unclear how they can be judged to be objectively true or false.  (Even our judgment would be nothing more exalted than... Read more

    ***   A new article in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   “Jacob’s Protector”   ***   More notes:   Even many decades after the Book of Mormon was published, Katherine Smith Salisbury, Joseph’s sister, was still deeply convinced of the authenticity of his claim to prophethood.  “I can testify to the fact of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon,” she said, and also to its truth, and the truth of the everlasting gospel as... Read more

    Just back with my wife from attending an enjoyable concert at BYU, with friends, featuring Jason Robert Brown and Kelli O’Hara.   Things like this are among the principal reasons that I love living near a major university.   ***   A thought that’s exceptionally appropriate for the Christmas season:   “A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human... Read more

    Some notes on Joseph Smith’s honesty and sincerity, based on the impressions of those who knew him well:   “We found him a boy of truth,” remembered Joseph Knight, Jr., of the twenty-one-year-old farmer’s son.[1] “So honest and plain were all his statements that there was no room,” said Newell Knight, “for any misgivings with me on the subject.”[2] Knight recalls the testimony of Josiah Stoal during a hearing against Joseph Smith in South Bainbridge, New York, in... Read more